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There recently was a thread about awful room-mates, along with pictures. I have my own experience.

Housing complex. The units are basically small cottages, made for two room-mates, with a common area and attached kitchen, a small storage closet in the common area containing water pipes leading to Suite A's bathroom. The two private areas of the suite contained a private bedroom, a sliding glass patio door, and a private bathroom. Sounds idyllic.

For the sake of saving my effort in recounting this story, here is a basic rundown of the chaos:

This run-through of incidents is going to be kind of terse, because I'm working off of a check list I made a while ago.

During our stay together, my roomie:

He brought his motorcycle into our common room because he was "afraid it would be stolen." This was fine, but then he started it and let it idle for 15 minutes without opening any windows, causing all of our stuff to smell like motor exhaust.

After his girlfriend left him, he went berserk in his private bathroom with a sledgehammer or a geologist's hammer and smashed all of his bathroom fixtures. I'm not sure of this but I believe that just before she left him she fucked some guy with pubic lice in my bed during a party.

His toilet was inoperative at this point, so he used mine for a time, until I refused him access. Later I would find out that he shat in garbage bags and kept them in the common room closet for weeks. More on this later.

He set fire to our carpet with alcohol during a party. He pissed in the fridge. He shat in the fridge. He shat in the crisper drawer. He shat on the oven top, and instead of cleaning it up, turned on the burner, reasoning that carbon is easier to clean than feces.

He left a dead cat he found somewhere in our oven for a week and forgot about it. I discovered it later.

He owned 6 tarantulas, and would let one run around free-range. He assured me he had "tamed it." I assured him he was a stupid fuckhead.

He never showered.

He sold drugs from his room. He smoked pot with his friends in the common area. He spilled bong water on two of my text books. He and his friends did cocaine off of the television set in the common area.

He had a party to which he invited too many people, and they spilled into my room. Strangers had sex in my room at that party. In my bed. One of them had pubic lice. Someone took a dump in my closet. Someone left a used condom in my slipper. I discovered all of these things after it was too late.

Morning after said party, my mother knocked on the front door, and a stranger from that party answered and immediately threw up on her legs.

Crackheads would regularly come by our apartment at all hours of the night trying to buy drugs because of his illicit activities. Whenever I answered the door and indicated that there was no crack to be had, they would sometimes get, desperate, belligerent and violent, and refuse to leave.

He put food products containing milk, meat and cheese on the heating unit and turned it on for three hours to see what would happen. I could've told him what would happen if he asked me.

He got angry at some video game he and his friends were playing in the common area, so he busted into my room while I was sleeping, and punched me in the face and stomach.

A few days later he put a tarantula in my bedsheets while I was sleeping. Thankfully I wasn't bitten, but I was freaked out and still sometimes jump out of bed in the middle of the night for no reason and attack my sheets.

He shat in a lot of our fixtures. He would put his shit in baggies and leave them in strange places. I was thankfull for when he used a baggie. A few words of advice for potential room-mates: A light fixture is not a toilet. A heating vent is not a toilet. The sink is not a toilet. The oven is not a toilet. That is all.

I was pissed at this point. He refused to clean or take care of all of the messes listed above, so I ended up cleaning them, but keeping an hourly log and catalogue of what work I did and worked out a bill, which I sent to him. I was tired of cleaning feces out of our refridgerator, finding turds in our crisper drawer, shit on the stovetop, vomit on the carpet, vomit in our potted plants, vomit on the grille of our television set, urine on the carpet, urine on the kitchen floor seeping behind the refridgerator, dead animals in our oven and freezer units, and bags of feces hidden in our light fixtures.

Have you ever had to move your refridgerator out of its little nook to get behind it to clean urine mixed with whatever the fuck lurks behind a refridgerator in the first place?

After sending him the cleaning bill and getting a refusal of payment, I took some of his stuff, dumped it in a storage unit across town, and held it until he paid me back. He stole some of my stuff in retaliation, but I called the cops and repossessed my belongings. He was unable to articulate to the cops that I had some of his shit in this exchange, so I ended up basically getting my shit back while he had to be put in their car to cool off.

Upon retrospect, I think maybe he became mentally ill after losing his girlfriend, and not being able to part with his feces was part of his illness. This is purely speculative.

He wasn't poor. He was from a wealthy family. They don't come into the picture, though.

This is where the sealing begins. Put a datemark right here, because this is where shit gets crazy.========================

I had had enough. I bought a minifridge, a plug-in stovetop, two padlocked footlockers, a wooden bar, duct tape, a remote-control car, and an external padlock. My private area had two entrances... Here, I best sum up my little fortress in this post I made in another thread:

quote: Actually, upon reflection, I really want to share how I kept my room-mate out of my private area. It was dubbed the "Home Alone" security system.

I had two potential entrances to my private area, a sliding glass patio door and a regular door to the common area. I secured the common door with a padlock on the outside which was really just for show. The inside was barricaded. At the bottom I had a rolled up towel, and I sealed the rest of it with tape to avoid smell or other chemical assaults from the common area. I packed against the door with my king-sized bed, which was in turn secured from being dislodged by a bookshelf full of weights and books. Even if he got through the padlock, he would not have been able to open the door without busting it in two. The top half of the door was unsecured; I was worried he might break the door and gain access, so when I siezed his stuff I had it put in public storage across town.

Now the sliding glass door is where the home alone shit comes in. It had a lock, but it was nonfunctional and only accessible from the inside. So in order to secure the door while I was away, I got a remote controlled car, attached it to a string which was secured by a fisheye screw at the top of the door, and tied to a security bar which would drop into the tread of the sliding door, preventing it from being opened.

Anyone who has a sliding glass door would know how this works, but if anyone needs further explanation, I'm happy to furnish it.

So when I came home, I would whip out my little remote control, make the RC car run off and lift the bar, then gain access to the apartment. To prevent this system from being discovered, I papered the inside of the sliding door with butcher paper, and I ran a wire outside of the door in an obvious manner, so that the roomie would think that this wire somehow, if tugged correctly, would undo the lock. To my knowledge, all of his attempts to get inside my apartment were by messing with this wire, which was attached to the handle of an antique coffee grinder and a paint can. If you tugged it, you'd get a wierd uneven resistance as the handle crank turned and the paint can danced, which added to the illusion that this wire was some secret way of ingress.

I heard this account from the neighbors, because it occurred while I was away, but apparenty he had lost his front door key, had some kind of intestinal problem, and had to take a shit really bad. All of the neighbors he knew he had already hit up for toilet access and been refused by this point. So he's swearing like crazy and yanking at this wire, and bashing against the door in a frenzied desperation when the neighbors call the cops, reporting a B&E. When the cops show up he's taking a shit in the bushes just outside my window. I fucking hate him so much.

I think he went crazy and lost all his friends at some point, because around the time I barricaded, I stopped hearing parties. In fact, I stopped hearing anything from the common area of the apartment, except for the occasional formless moans and thumping. I don't know precisely what went on in there, because I mentally washed my hands of the whole area. I did, however, start smelling odors. I taped up my door. I know it wasn't smart to do things like this, but I was just fucking sick of dealing with his shit. I didn't call the landlord or anything, despite the fact that I knew he was destroying things over there. After cleaning so much of his shit up, I just wanted the universal god of justice to see what a wreck the place would become without my presence.

Forgive me for being a little spotty in my descriptions after this point. What I do know of what transpired over there I can only reconstruct from forensic evidence, what precisely was destroyed, what commmon friends have told me in their accounts, and two forrays over into the waste zone over the next two months. I essentially didn't even see the front door of our apartment during this time.

quote:Shokan came out of the closet to say: What was this guy's story about shitting on a stove and leaving it on? Or shit in the refridgerator? OR shit in various fixtures?

Why didn't you call the landlord and get this guy kicked out?

The feces he left around falls into three categories:A) Experiments he conducted. The stove top feces thing was an experiment he conducted after his toilet was broken, and I refused him access to mine, and his neighbors got sick of letting him use theirs. I think he was trying to find some new way of getting rid of his shit. Either that or he thought it would be funny to make me clean shit off of his stove top and then got curious about what would happen if he turned on the burner. He really liked playing with heating elements and fire. It was fucking stupid. The dead cat in the oven, I think, falls into this category as well.

B) Feces in the refridgerator, shit in the closet, vomit on the TV, etc. I lump this into the "OOPS I SHAT ON YOUR CARPET DURING A PARTY" category.

C) Shit inside baggies in various places: After I stopped letting him use my bathroom he got angry and I think this started off as his way of "proving" to me that I should let him use my bathroom. After a while of this I think it started to take on a life of his own, and he started stashing his feces due to some mental illness. This is purely speculative.

quote:Ott came out of the closet to say: I read your posts in the other thread... hilarious story.

I'm having a hard time picturing the "Home Alone" security system, though.

Ok, if you've ever owned a sliding door, you know that you can secure it from being opened by putting a wooden dowel in the treads while the door is closed. This is great, except it can't be opened from the outside. So what I did, was I attached a string to the dowel, and lead the string up to the top of the door, through a little loop-nail, and back down to a remote controlled car. By moving the car with a remote control from outside the apartment, I could cause the string to be tugged, raising the dowel, and granting me access to the interior of the apartment. I'm almost more proud of the wire trick, because I gain endless pleasure from that fucker spending hours and hours trying to yank on this stupid dummy wire I put out there for him in order to get inside and mess with my shit.

quote:A wINNer = mE! came out of the closet to say: Holy shit, I don't think I've ever heard a more disgusting tale regarding bad roommates.

Are you just a wimp? The first time I found a turd in the apartment outside of a waste receptical (toilet), I would have yelled at him at the top of my lungs and made him clean it up.

Actually, Jed was much smaller than me, and emaciated. In retrospect I could have taken him, easily. That's just not how I do things. I do not break the law. Ever. I absolutely must have a clean, orderly house, which is why I went around cleaning shit up, regardless of who did it. I am not some cowardly little bitch, in fact, I think Jed was afraid of me, which is why he did passive agressive shit like shitting in light fixtures. I generally don't try to solve disputes by shouting or anything, I just quietly give notice of the unacceptable condition, document it, and clean it up. Somewhere back at my parent's house I have a box full of typed, dated, signed letters to Jed stating the date, time, and extent of a mess I had to clean up, and a notice that such behavior is not acceptable, and that unless he stopped, I would move out and make him responsible for rent. Those letters helped me eventually recover back rent from him for the equivalent value of the common area he exclusively occupied during my stay there.

I eventually got so pissed off at the condition of the rest of the apartment that I could only deal with it by sealing it off, and ignoring it. Essentially there is a blank period of about a month where I absolutely ignored anything from the common area, which is why it got so bad.

I was crazy busy with schoolwork and my job, so I basically just shut the whole situation out of my mind for a while. After some time, I came to the realization that this guy might start a fire and get us both killed, which is really the beginning of the end. The thing that ended the insanity was his discovery thatA) He had access to the fuse boxandB) He could trip the fuse to my room with some metal and a hallway plugandC) He was too stupid to manually flip the fuse switch and just turn off my power, so he had to go the fire hazard route. I think he might have been afraid of touching the fuse box for fear of being electrocuted.

But I'll detail the downfall of this shit later.

For those of you wondering why I didn't call the landlord. I was kind of in denial. I just figured that whatever happened over there was Jed's business. I think I was on a sublease under him at the time, so I wasn't too worried about damage to the apartment. I withheld rent from him during this time too. His family was paying rent for the whole unit, and I would reimburse him directly. I deducted cleaning costs and other things from the rent I paid him. I think he was too embarassed or crazy to call me on it, or have his lawyer financial guru daddy get me busted.

Quick fact: His father was on the cover of Forbes magazine like 8 years ago.

Have you ever had something go wrong, and, knowing it was someone elses responsibility, just didn't intervene out of sheer curiousity about how it fucking bad it would get? I didn't turn him in for that reason too. I just... wanted to see how bad it would get. I was stupid, mad, curious, and really didn't have any responsibility for damage to the unit, knowing his family would cover the costs.

Edit: So, basically, I didn't kick his ass for two reasons: A) I am always law abiding to a fault, and B) The setup I made was really very convenient for me, and made it so I never even had any contact with the guy. It was basically rent-free... I paid $50 a month in rent after all of the deductions for unsanitary conditions and ouster from the common area I made (and documented... and got to keep after the courts got done looking at it...), and I was exiting and entering from an opposite end of the house. Basically, I only really knew what Jed was up to during this period from forensic evidence in the apartment and the accounts of friends, neighbors, and the police.

quote:DannyManic came out of the closet to say: Yeah, dude, you're crazier than he is.

From my perspective, imagine this: You are strapped for cash. Someone offers you a studio apartment, with minifridge and bathroom for $50 a month, and after you move out, you're given a few thousand dollars just for living there. The only catch is that there's a closet you can't open, and you have to tape around the edges, and the lock to get in is a remote controlled car rig. Sounds like a good deal to me. Jed couldn't make much noise to bother me after I confiscated his music equipment. All of the people talking about going ape shit sound like the nutballs to me. I'm very easy going, and I came out of this ahead. I'll get to the renumeration later.

Also it was very satisfying to have this asshole's shit in a locker across town and know that he desperately wanted to fuck with my shit but couldn't, and couldn't prove I ganked his stuff. He would flip the fuck out in rage from this. I think that might have contributed to his degeneration into madness.

I kind of messed up the timeline for this stuff, so here's a quick runthrough before I continue the story.

TIME A: Tons of parties, vomit being cleaned up by me, tarantula, punching, etc. I start witholding rent at this point, and am subtracting $200 a month from the rent for cleaning costs.

TIME B: His girlfriend leaves him. His friends stop hanging out with him. He smashes his bathroom. He uses mine for a time, is denied access, uses neighbor's for a time, is denied access, and is angry at me for refusing him access to my bathroom. I fixed his faucets so they wouldn't leak all over the place and sent him a bill. He gets really pouty and angry and does the famous shit on the stovetop. He does experiments with various places to piss and poop, eventually settling on leaving it in baggies around the house. When I tell him this is unacceptable, he responds with a demand to use my bathroom, which I refuse. Around this time, while cleaning the stove top, I find the cat in the oven. It has a collar on it so I put it in a box and return it to the owners, not explaining where I found it, and advising them not to look in the box. I don't know how that turned out, and I didn't give them my name. I hope it got hit by a car and wasn't killed by Jed.

TIME C: Jed starts trying to get at me by playing his subwoofer really loud at odd hours, and demanding to use the bathroom. I get back at him by packing away all of his stuff, (including the audio equiptment) and storing it in a friend's storage unit across town. I think that he started to really go truly crazy at this point. I come home finding him taking things out of my room and putting them into his truck. I restrain him and call the police. By this point he is beyond all rationality and is completely flipping out, so he is put in the copcar for a while and the officer helps me unload my things from his truck. For some bizarre reason the officer does not arrest him, but after "talking to him" lets him go. I think my calm temperment made the officer not realize he was violent and that is why I was restraining him. (My motto in life: "So it goes.")

TIME D: I dub this time the sealing. I really don't mind cleaning up poop and piss, I used to be assistant manager of an apartment complex, but it is taking too much time to clean. I buy a range-top, and seal things off after writing a surrender letter to Jed, declaring that he has evicted me from the common area. Shortly after I come up with my Home Alone security system, withold rent except for a nominal $50 a month, and go on with life as if I did not have a crazy room-mate sealed away in the other end of the apartment. Time left on lease at this point: 2 months.

Edit: Time D is when he shits in the bushes and is arrested for the night.

TIME E: The black time. I am not sure what exactly went on in the apartment during these two or three weeks. This is around the time finals are going on, so I really don't care. Water starts leaking from the wall, so I re-enter the common area to see what is up. This description really deserves its own post, and will clog the time-line up, so I'll elaborate later. I fix the water leak, which he had been covering up with newspapers, and promptly exit. Once he finds out I was in his area he flips out and makes a lot of noise over there, but I do not investigate.

Remainder: There is one further, final re-entry by myself, with a flashlight. I couldn't get in with my key because the door was messed up, and his sliding door was blocked with a mattress, so I kicked down the door and entered. After a quick walk-through I call the fire department, the landlord, the police, and an ambulance. This is full of drama and will be detailed in its own post.

The Black Time:I'm very preoccupied with work and school at this point. Since my point of entry on the house is opposite from the front door, the only real contact I have with Jed at this point is what I can hear from him through the walls, and whatever odor seeps under the door past my homeland security setup. This is pretty tolerable as a condition, definetely worth the $50 a month I was paying for it, but I was starting to get worried. I was worried about Jed's tarantulas getting into the ventilation system, so I sealed that off with plastic wrap and duct tape. Then I started worrying about fire. Jed liked to play with heating elements and flames, and he was an alcoholic, so I was worried that with the sealed off vent I wouldn't know if the house were on fire. At around 3pm, I was studying, when I noticed that my feet were getting wet. Upon inspection, the carpet next to the wall was wet. I went around to the front of the house and found that the door was ajar. I went back to my apartment and picked up a plumber's wrench and a flashlight to see what was wrong.

I'm not exactly the best at descriptions, as you can probably tell from the poor quality of writing in this thread, but here's the best I can do. I'll try to portray these things from my perspective at the time, and not reveal what they eventually turned out to be.

I unlocked the front door of the apartment and pushed it open, after confirming that Jed's truck was gone. The lights in the place were out and the shades were drawn. The light shone inside and revealed that there were strange particulates hanging in the air. Not quite smoke. I would almost say that the odor was so thick in the apartment that it could be seen with the naked eye. Upon reflection, I imagine that what I was seeing was mold spores.

As the arc of light from the bright outside swept across the room, a few things were revealed in sequence: First off, the common area was absolutely covered in free student newspapers. There were obviously things underneath because the newspapers bulged, and I could even identify an easy chair covered in newspapers in the corner. The kitchen was crammed with garbage. I could identify two large bulky garbage bags in the corner of the common room. Investigating them further, I discovered that they were covered in some kind of glistening brown muck. The whole place smelled absolutely rank. I swept my light across the place a few times, just to make sure Jed wasn't there lying in wait with a knife or something, and I proceeded into the apartment, leaving the door open. I took some vic's vaporub from my pocket and doubed just under my nose. The garbage bags had been hastily pulled out of the common room closet, the one which contains pipes leading to Jed's bathroom. I shined a light into the closet and a rat or mouse or something ran very quickly under the newspapers in the common room. I looked and saw that there were several dents in a pipe in the common closet, and it was otherwise soaked. Finding no immediate source for the water, I proceeded into the hallway area towards Jed's room.

I was a little uneasy, because the whole place was filled with debris. The common furnature that came with the apartment was lodged in the strangest places. Like the hallway to Jed's room had the common couch in it, upturned. I climbed over that after making sure Jed wasn't under it. I was a little more nervous because my egress had been essentially blocked by this couch, and walked past the debris. It looked like he was salvaging equiptment and building materials from local construction yards. I could identify in the hallway, piping materials, a toilet lid, cinderblocks, scrap wood, and a box of pilfered nails. Jed's large sledge hammer (or geologists hammer, I don't know which) was lodged in the door of his room. I pushed it open and the damn thing fell out, giving me a fright. Anyway, I proceeded into his room, which was strangely clean. There was nothing in there, but the floor was absolutely soaked. I realized what happened; he realized there was water everywhere and threw all of his shit outside of the room into the hallway, and leaned his mattress against the sliding door (where it remained, to my knowledge, for like two weeks. I have no idea where he was sleeping.). The leak was coming from his bathroom, so I went in with my wrench ready to clock the shit out of my crazy room mate if he should jump out at me.

I saw the familiar smashed bathroom fixtures, and I was very thankful for the vic's vaporub, but the stench stung my eyes still. There was a bathtub covered in newspapers. I proded it with my wrench and the newspapers gave way, like they were on top of jello or something soft and organic. I prodded it harder and what I can only describe as fecal fluid seeped from the sides of the newspaper. I think he was taking shits in the bathtub and covering it with newspapers, like some kind of foul lasagna. The leak was coming from under his sink, which he had dislodged through some violence. I could see the remains of a cinderblock on the pipe, so I think he might have been hitting the pipe with a cinderblock. I turned off the water to the sink, stopping the leak, and decided that it would be best if I left before he returned.

On my way out, I climbed into the kitchen area and opened the fridge, just out of curiosity. There was a ball-like, organic mass in the middle, with tendrils of mold growing out of it. It was roughly the size of a human head with a large dent in it. Not desiring to get toxic mold in my nostrils, I closed the fridge and surveyed the common closet again. The walls of the closet were covered in a black shiny material which glistened. Upon closer inspection, it was mold. I didn't know that mold looked like that. I prodded the newspapers a little bit, but remembering the rat, and not wanting to get bitten, I left the apartment, closing the door behind me.

I got a towel and did my best to dry out the carpet. I left my sliding glass door open to help air the place out. I printed out a notice to Jed that I had entered and fixed his sink, and placed it under the door. I later heard Jed come home, and he obviously discovered I had been in there, because he started freaking out, swearing, and throwing things around. I heard the couch in the hallway get rammed into my door. He threw a tantrum for another five minutes, and then I heard the front of the apartment door slam. I heard him approach my sliding glass door, swearing, and I can only imagine that after seeing it open, he decided not to come any further. Like I said, the guy was afraid of me. He left in his truck a few minutes later, to return in ten minutes. I heard strange moaning and stumbling around in the apartment after that. I think he was moving furniture or something. I heard breaking glass a few times, but after that, silence.

quote:jollygrinch came out of the closet to say: Spiders freak me out. Just the thought of one of his 6 coming flying at me from under some news paper would be enough to make me torch the place and run screaming into the night.

Oh I completely forgot about that. Yeah. I was not only afraid of Jed popping out with a knife, I was also afraid of those tarantulas. They were like a big unknown X-factor in the apartment. Normally I'm not very frightened of just godawful messes or rats, but if you throw giant tarantulas into the mix it really drives me up a wall. Especially in terrain like that. I was imagining setting my hand down on a part of the couch right as I was climbing over it and setting it right down on top of one of those hairy bastards. They could move, too. The fact that there were newspapers all around for them to hide under didn't help. And I imagined they had plenty to eat while in that apartment, and possibly gave birth to a jillion other little tarantulas.

edited. I'll tell you this fact later..

The Kidnapping.

Let's get this over with.

So as I said, I am a pretty easy going person and I could tolerate this situation pretty endlessly. But as I hinted earlier, Jed eventually made this situation unlivable. Here's how it goes down:

I've long been using a cellphone since Jed pretty much has control of our apartment phone, and whenever anyone calls he'll answer with crazytalk. To my knowledge, he still has access to the store room in Longs Drugs, from which he has been stealing crates full of random stuff.

Anyway, lately, Jed was more active than usual. I hear a lot of heavy stuff getting dragged around, and crashing, and lots of moaning, hollering, and other psychotic outbursts.

One evening I hear Jed making a hell of a lot of noise, then silence. Then I hear the front door slam, and his truck goes off. A while later, he comes back, I hear more slamming into things, and a bunch of really high pitched loud vocalizations, kind of like whales mating.

I get a call on my cellphone. This is basically how it goes.*ring* *pickup*Jed: SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSATAN!Me: Hi Jed. You're nuts.Jed: I HAVE SARAH (Jed's ex girlfriend)Me: Really.Jed: LISTEN.I immediately hear a high pitched shrieking from the other end of the apartment, and banging and stumbling around. Sarah is a water polo champ. I think if he somehow got her into the apartment, he would have to hit her in the head with his big geologists hammer, because there's no way he would be able to wrestle her inside conscious. At any rate, I bet at the time that he hadn't grabbed Sarah, and the high pitched screaming was really that crazy motherfucker. I've been getting all kinds of crazy phone calls from Jed lately, so I call bluff:Me: That sounds like you Jed.Jed: COME AND SEE.Me: I need to study. Bye Jed. *click*

This is a very normal response from me, because by this point Jed has been calling me and saying all kinds of crazy shit. Basically, if I can hear him through the wall, I completely disregard anything he might say on the phone. He's called me once and begged for help because he's stranded on the nascar race track in the middle of a race and I can clearly hear him through the wall. So I have a very trained automated response to Jed's calls: "Hi Jed. You're crazy. That's nice. I need to study. Bye Jed."

At this point, I smell smoke. This is very disconcerting, because as I said earlier, I have been living in fear of the whole place going up in flames. I stand up from my desk, and at that very moment, the power goes out, and I hear Jed laughing like crazy through the wall. I hear what sounds like something banging against the pipes in his bathroom, and some other, deeper noises, which I haven't heard before. The noises have a sort of deep bass resonance, like a big drum, as if a bull or some other large creature were banging around over there. Jed's a small guy, and I didn't think him capable of moving shit around heavy enough to make that kind of noise with that degree of frequency. Since I smelled smoke and the power was out, I grab my gigantic wrench, smear some vic's on my nose, put on my leather jacket, put on a motorcycle helmet I confiscated from Jed, and prepare myself for battle, maglight in hand.

I am really psyched up at this point. I know a lot of you will be saying that I was stupid for operating like this, but I reasoned with myself that I had better go over there just in case he HAD captured some poor girl and was, I dunno, by the noise of it, bludgeoning her to death with a tuba. I headed around to Jed's car and looked inside. I saw he had rope and there was blood inside the cabin. I tried the door, it was locked. I smashed the window with a wrench and went inside the cabin. Behind the seat was some bloody rags. Ohhhh shit. At this point I decide I had better get the fuck in there and stop whatever he was up to. I felt really guilty at this point for letting it get this far. I decided that if I were to go in there and die, I would've earned it for letting him get that crazy for that long.

I trucked it over to the door, set my wrench on the ground, and fumbled for my keys. I unlocked the door but it wouldn't give. The door was moist. I didn't quite understand that. I pushed and pushed but it hardly moved an inch. So I started stomping at the door as hard as I could. Eventually I heard something slide and shift and collapse on the other side of the door, and I gave it another kick. My foot actually made a hole and went through the door, and I fell over. I started freaking out because I was worried Jed would stab my boot or something, so I struggled and hurt my ankle. I also broke my foot from the kicking. Eventually I calmed and got my foot out of the door, and bodychecked the door. It came flying off the hinges, and came completely to pieces.

Ok, so I bashed the door in, and I went flying into the apartment, head first into a wall that is right in front of the doorway. The couch had been barricaded against the door, and my kicking caused it to tip over. It was still partially blocking the door. I immediately started struggling wildly once I was on the floor, flailing my wrench and maglight everywhere in case something was about to jump on me. I immediately exited the apartment, grabbed a metal patio chair, and hurled it into the blackened apartment in case anyone was in there. The motorcycle helmet was making it really hard to hear any kind of ambush, and it was covered in grease and filth from the couch, so I ditched it, and proceeded inside. It was night time out so I didn't get the benefit of a good light source from outside, and my maglight had grease on it. I saw a glow coming from the corner. I tried to smell if there was smoke coming from a particular direction, but the Vic's vaporub made it difficult. I swung my light around the room and found it full of trash like it was before. There was no way I could ascertain whether Jed was hiding under something. I did note that some of the newspapers were covered in what looked like splotches of blood. From my forensics training I could gather from the splotches that whatever shed them was moving at a high rate of speed through the apartment.

I bounded over the couch into the apartment, landing on my broken foot, and falling on my face, in a lot of pain. I remembered the tarantulas and freaked out again, scrambling to my feet and stumbling over towards the source of light. I discovered that Jed had stolen a large floodlight from Longs drugs, which was in the corner, smouldering the carpet. I grabbed that and quickly shone it all over the place. Suddenly I saw that there was a guy about 6 feet tall wearing a beige suit about two feet away from me, so I flipped the fuck out and tackled it. It turned out to be a cardboard standup of Captain Kirk Jed got somehow. I picked up my wrench again and limped onward.

The apartment was completely silent by this point. All I could hear was some kind of dull tubal thumping from inside the place, that same dull bass noise I heard earlier. Remembering my crack training at counterstrike, instead of going further in, I limped over to the kitchen area and flung shit around to make sure that nobody was hiding under the newspapers. I could see that he had gotten a lot more crap since the last time I was here. There were mason jars of urine in the kitchen, along with gallon jugs of the stuff. There were a lot of things he had obviously stolen from longs drugs. There was a crate of sour patch kids all over the place. On one wall was a poster of homer simpson naked drinking beer, and a bunch of knives had been stabbed into it. I was too angered and pumped up to be frightened. I opened the refridgerator and stomped the shelves apart while I was at it, just to be sure he wasn't hiding in there.

I had a huge floodlight but it couldn't illuminate everything all the time, especially with the dank murk of mold spores and the smoke, so I ended up trying to shine it everywhere at once as I proceeded. The common closet was closed, so I kicked that in and swung my wrench into the dark area within. I hit something soft so I kept pounding at it, but it wasn't human. It was a trash bag full of something soft and yielding. I gave it a kick and moved on.

I ripped the doorway off of the hall closet and swung my wrench inside, but I only hit a few canned goods in there.

I could hear high pitched shrieks coming from the interior of his room. His hallway was pretty fucking well blocked with shit, so I started grabbing things and chucking them into the common room. He had a gigantic stuffed pluto doll, about as big as a gorilla, which I chucked. Among the other things I hurled was a futon I recognized as salvaged from the end of our block, some patio furniture, a bag full of mcdonalds playpen balls, and something which was big, black, disgusting, soft, covered in growht, which I cannot, even to this day, identify.

I crawled through the remaining debris with the wrench in front of me.

This is embarassing, but I forgot to mention. As I was hurling stuff, I had my wrench in my hand still, and so I hit myself in the face with it. It required some stitches, and, since I had hit the trashbag full of feces with the wrench, it got infected.

So to tally it up, we have one broken foot, one twisted ankle, one gouged and splintered shin, and one bleedingassed face.

So anyway, I am crawling through the hole I've made in the blockaded hallway. I finally realize why he has been making so much noise. The fucker has made some kind of evil fortress. If my room is the fortress of light, his is the fortress of evil. And feces.

I crawl through the hole and pop out in his room. My strategy when playing doom 3, when I knew something bad was about to happen in a room I dropped into, was to run around like crazy in the dark and fling grenades. Well, instead of doing the slick commando thing and dropping into a crouch and assessing the situation, I popped out of that hallway barricade with my wrench and flashlight, and ran like crazy into the pitch black room, swinging around at anything and everything. I connected with some stuff but nothing human. My foot failed me and I fell over and crawled like mad to a corner. I dove for my flashlight, picked it up, and assessed the room.

This place was full of fucking hostess products. The guy must have stolen at least two crates worth of the damn things. They were still in their wrapping. Twinkies, hostess cupcakes, all kinds of stuff. There was nobody in the room, but there was blood all over the place. I could hear that strange bass ressonance from inside the bathroom. There was actually a light coming from there, it was rosy red, coming from a crack in the bathroom door.

...the very air in Jed's room was absolutely thick with mold and smoke, which I couldn't smell from the vix, but it still stung my eyes anyway. He had smeared all kinds of crazy gibberish on the walls with what looked like red lipstick, and the walls themselves were absolutely covered in growth. The barricades in the hallway must've been there for a while, because they essentially kept a lot of moisture in the air in Jed's back section.

Also, I forgot to mention this as well, but as I was running like a sissy through Jed's room, I knocked into his mattress which he had leaned against the side door a few weeks prior (my estimate). The mattress was completely soaked and very heavy, and the instant it hit me I thought I had fallen into an insidious trap or something, so I further injured myself by trying to struggle out from underneath it. Jed was making these freaky noises the moment I burst into his room, but the echo chamber effect of the bathroom and ventillation system, and the strange nature of the noises, made it difficult to determine where the hell they were coming from. Also, there were tons of boxes of hostess cupcakes and other similar products.

The carpets in his room were really rank. The previous water leak had made them dank with mold, and I can only imagine what the high fecal content of the air did. It was difficult to breathe, and nearly impossible to see, which really added to my panic. It was almost like I had been buried alive. The scrawlings on the wall, though I didn't really get to see them in much detail because I was far more concerned with other things at the time, were just... creepy. The vibrations made me think for a second or two that he had tunnelled under the apartment and I'd have to go into some kind of underground basement he'd made.

Edit: Scrawlings on the wall from what I saw consisted of nonsense latin words, tons of triangles within triangles within triangles trailing all over the place, and a few goatsatan faces made of triangles.

I got to my feet and regained my composure. I stomped over the hostess cupcakes and other misc crap he had lying on the ground. I would limp every time I remembered I had a hurt foot, but really, by this time, I didn't give a shit about the pain. I heard the shrieking from inside the bathroom, like some kind of high pitched wailing, and the strange bass resonance. I kicked open the bathroom door and screamed at the top of my lungs,"YOU FUCKING FUCK SHIT"

I wasn't in the right mind to come up with awesome catch phrases, so let's pretend I screamed something bannable like, "The juice is loose!"

I stomped into the bathroom and was immediately PHYSICALLY STRUCK by the most powerful odor I have ever, ever encountered. My nose was pretty vixed up, but somehow, my eyeballs felt like they could smell the odor. I swung my wrench before I really looked to see what was going on and totalled what was left of the sink. In the corner of the bath tub I saw Jed writhing around with a golden metallic object in the shit lasagna. He was freaking out and screaming. The other thing I noticed was the fire. In the remains of the toilet tank was a bunch of flaming papers, right next to a can of paint thinner. I figured that Jeb threw in the thinner thinking it would burst into flames, but he neglected to uncap the thing. So I grabbed the can of paint thinner and in one swift motion clocked Jeb in the head with it. He started freaking out even more, and at this point I could see that the object he was writhing with in the tub was a saxophone. He seemed to be bleeding all over his head but it was hard to tell because of the shit smeared everywhere, coming out onto the floor. The lightbulb was covered in either nail polish or blood.

I backed out of the room and grabbed a jug of urine, and threw it at the fire. Remembering I should probably uncap the jug before using it to extinguish flames, I grabbed another one and actually poured it out. By this time Jeb was trying to get out of the bath tub, so I stomped at him with my boot, closed the bathroom door, and jammed the fuck out of there after one final check for any hostages in the bedroom.

Then I got the fuck out of there, rammed the exterior door with a patio table, and called the cops, the fire department, an ambulance, and, after getting back into my place and looking up the number, the landlord.

There. Done.

Oh, and aftermath, there was some court action for back rent, but all said and done they couldn't prove I was witholding rent because I paid Jed with cash on the barrel head, and I ended up actually getting paid money to stay there in the long run. I still have Jed's things to this day and to my knowledge he is in a nutbarn or something.

quote:Shokan came out of the closet to say:

Did he actually play the saxophone?

No he didn't.

And for those curious, the shrill whale-like noises were actually his insane vocalizations. If you don't know, it's very hard to be that crazy and actually make a sound on a saxophone. No, I don't know where he got the sax.

Background storyJeb was the dyslexic slightly medicated son of wealthy, distant parentage. He had trouble in school and wasn't very smart, and had a little bit of trouble dealing with things on a rational level since I first met him; I think this was due to the fact that he's been medicated since high school.

He was white as can be, with blond hair, and very skinny. I am only 6 feet tall and 150 pounds (I get a lot of aerobic exercise so it's difficult to maintain bulk) and he was smaller than I am. I could easily overpower him.

He dropped out of high school because of his dyslexia, got a GED, and finally attended a two year college at the time of the incident. He worked at longs drugs as a stock boy despite the fact that he didn't need the money, and made most of his friends through his job. I don't know if you know this, but longs drugs employees are some heavy drinkers and heavy partiers.

He had trouble with drugs, and while I knew him went from completely clean to having a problem with alcohol to going as far as snorting cocaine off of our television set once during a party. He was a pretty decent, but troubled guy before he went apeshit crazy.

I, in contrast, am a very clean, humorless fellow who never drinks, parties, or watches TV. Some would call me "obnoxiously uptight" but I break that mold by being extremely easygoing and laid back about everything. So I'm very uptight with myself without being uptight with others, if that makes sense. I'm the ultimate stoic.

Also I was just reminiscing with a friend who reminded me that I was screaming at the apartment afterwards calling him a "Shitbathing nazi"

It was so long ago I find it hard to remember just why I did what I did, the way I did it. Partly I left things as they were because I was mad, and I wanted to prove that he would really fuck things up if I wasn't there to clean his shit up. Partly, I didn't really care what he did, because if he fucked stuff up it was his ass on the line. Partly, I was sort of curious, in that manner of a distant bystander, just how awful things would get before the forces around us intervened. Finally, I wanted to see how long I could get by witholding rent in a righteous indignation. Really, I let it go on for the most petty, inexcusable reasons imaginable.

Afterthought from the author

It's hard to convey the strong, stoic attitude without sounding like either an asshole or a doormat, but, to try again to put it simply: A doormat tries to overextend his control and folds at the drop of a hat. An asshole rigidly defines his influence, extending it over other people, and doesn't fold even when it's futile to resist. I choose my battles very carefully, and where I do assert myself, there is no amount of insanity that will cause me to budge. For all the awfullness, Jed didn't really intrude upon me. I had a few months of very nice, intrusion free existence, where I had all that I wanted in a little exclusive area of the house for very little rent. Where Jed tried to fuck with my shit, I set things up so he couldn't. Where I couldn't do that, I just removed myself from the equation. Choose your battles. I wouldn't stick around in the common area and bitch and whine like a pussy, or pick fights like an ass. I would just remove myself from the conflict, and continue to live the good life. In the fortress of awesomeness.

Just to clarify, the shriek noises were his psychotic wailing, not the sax, which was full of shit and inoperable. The strange base noises was his movements in the shit lasagna tub, amplified by the fact that it is a gigantic shitty cheap plastic tub and next to my wall.

There were never tarantulas actually running around in the apartment. They were all in their cages and quite dead by the time the showdown occurred. I wish I had known that, because I might not have been so berserk frenzied at the time of re-entry.

The cleaning costs were somewhere around twenty five thousand dollars. I know I scored around 8 thousand dollars after it was all said and done. I don't know what the police said, and his parents refused to speak to me except through lawyers.

I know they called some special unit or something with moonsuits to extract Jeb from his shithole, but I didn't stick around much after that before going to the hospital. I drove myself.

Oh haha, I forgot one silly little detail.

The cops were about to go into the apartment, and I told them, "Be careful. He has tons of tarantulas and they're probably all over the place in there."

After that they gave eachother a look and decided to wait for the moonsuit crew.

That couch is a whole other story too. We had two couches, one was a common couch and one was this crazy couch my roomie had bought at a garage sale. The crazy couch was made of black fur, and was gigantic. It was the one blocking the door, and had shit growing all over it. I don't know how, but somehow mold is all greasy when it gets wiped on stuff. I'm not sure where the other couch was at the second re-entry. I can't remember if it was blocking the hallway or what.

note from dave (owner of the website you're at): this story isn't MY story, it was taken from the Something Awful (another website) forums. my friend and host rush68 decided to take the forum thread and strip it down to the main story parts so it was easier to read, and then he uploaded it to my website for the world to enjoy. i'm adding this disclaimer because this site seems to be getting an extremely large number of hits due to this page being linked widely across the internet, and i don't want to feel like i'm deceiving people.

but, for a shameless plug, if you're looking for more things just as hilarious as this story or possibly funnier, be sure to check out the rest of my website. specifically the mini-logs, the funniest aim quotes IN THE WORLD!